Preparing for Windows 10 with MSP Certification

Preparing for Windows 10 with MSP Certification

September 27, 2017

Back in early October, Microsoft announced Windows 10 for services and devices, which has driven changes in many businesses. In order to stay ahead maximise their IT resources, many businesses will need to upgrade their IT systems quickly and efficiently in order to not impact on working times. For many enterprises, this will be a huge task that will require careful consideration, planning and training. In order to roll out the new technology successful enterprise-wide, it will require fully trained and certified staff. The best way to ensure that a project like this goes to plan and is rolled successfully is to do it with MSP.

We're going to tell you how MSP would start to look at rolling out new technology, and the steps to make it successful. First, we're going to look at the migration starts and how you should plan your project roll out.

• Firstly, you need to analyse the needs of the affected stakeholders to determine migration schedules, any training requirements, timings and operation cut-over to the new system.
• Next, determine the measures of your success for the migration effort. By defining your project with quantifiable measures, at the end you can measure the success of the project. Remember, it's extremely difficult to improve what can't be measured.
• Initiate the migration planning effort at the outset of the project before the development and implementation approach is set in concrete. Clearly define a plan of action, lines of communication, authority and provide adequate resources. Do not treat the effort as an added task for assigned team members.
• Make sure customers and users are aware of the migration planning effort too, make sure you have clear communications with everyone involved.
• Do not allow system implementation to begin until a migration plan is approved and the “buy-in” of the affected stakeholders is obtained. Remember when rolling out something as big as new technology that the migration needs to be broken into manageable chunks that correspond with the planned roll out.
• You can do the above by ensuring the rollout is appropriately scales and work with the organisation's current workload, you need to pick an appropriate time to do a technology rollout, and assess the skill pool to ensure you have all the best resources.
• Establish priorities for migrating users of the existing legacy systems and give consideration to any organisational infrastructure improvements that can accelerate and improve the migration effort or may be needed to overcome impediments in the current working environment.
• Establish criteria to evaluate the level of difficulty of transitioning the user community corresponding to each legacy system. Consider addressing high-risk migration issues first since their solution may have the greatest impact on the development effort and may determine the feasibility of migrating users of every legacy system.
• Identify meaningful and measurable milestones to track progress. Also, consider conducting a survey of the user community as early as possible to obtain their insight into what they believe are the greatest impediments to moving to a modernised system. It's always good to have everyone’s thoughts and ideas before rolling out new technology.
• Ensure that the scope of migration planning includes deployment, the transition to full operational use, and phase out of any affected legacy systems.
• Once you've completed the steps, it's time to move onto the next stage of the project – actively managing and monitoring the migration effort.
• Establish a goal-driven measurement program based on stakeholder needs to obtain visibility into the migration effort. Then schedule periodic reviews commensurate with the risks involved, organizational policies and regulations, vested interests of key stakeholders, and assurances sought by the sponsor and project manager.
• Identify meaningful and measurable milestones to track progress. Also, consider conducting a survey of the user community as early as possible to obtain their insight into what they believe are the greatest impediments to moving to a modernised system. It's always good to have everyone’s thoughts and ideas before rolling out new technology.
• Ensure that the scope of migration planning includes deployment, the transition to full operational use, and phase out of any affected legacy systems.
• Once you've completed the steps, it's time to move onto the next stage of the project – actively managing and monitoring the migration effort.
• Establish a goal-driven measurement program based on stakeholder needs to obtain visibility into the migration effort. Then schedule periodic reviews commensurate with the risks involved, organizational policies and regulations, vested interests of key stakeholders, and assurances sought by the sponsor and project manager.
• Establish a tracking system to manage progress, problems, issues, and other action items that pertain to migration planning and execution.
• It is also thoroughly recommended that for migration programmes requiring new hardware, you employ the services of someone fully qualified with a fully up to date enterprise architecture certification such as TOGAF 9.
• Last of all, when the technology has been rolled out and the project has finished that measure your results so that your project management can be adjusted next time in order to create the best outcome for your business.